


Summer Lovin (And Fall, And Winter)

by ultrafreakyfangirl



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, sort of canon compliant, takes place post Season 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-30 05:24:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19846471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultrafreakyfangirl/pseuds/ultrafreakyfangirl
Summary: Over a series of hallmark holidays, Nancy and Steve navigate what they mean to each other.





	Summer Lovin (And Fall, And Winter)

**Author's Note:**

> I can't stress this enough - if you like what I'm putting out there, tell me! : ) I want more conversation between readers and me. Otherwise, who am I writing this for? (I've always had trouble writing just purely for myself, because it feels pointless and wasteful of energy sometimes). 
> 
> Also this is low key what I wish would happen on the show. It's not like I don't like Jancy or dislike Jonathan, it's just that their relationship kind of was boring to me this season after putting so much energy into it in season 2. It felt very old-married couple vibe and anti climactic. (and in the span of a year?) No. 
> 
> I picture Steve and Nancy always being that fun couple with the red hot chemistry and she's always keeping him on his toes and vice versa.

Nancy went dressed as Dorothy from the _Wizard of Oz._ She drew over her natural freckles with a red fine-tipped marker he hoped wasn’t permanent, put her hair in two identical braids sprouting from the sides of her head like his niece often wore her hair to school (she’s seven) and a blue and white checkered dress, complete with white knee socks and a pair of fire-engine red flats that were all the wrong color but somehow made the costume more endearing than anything else.

Robin went as The Wicked Witch of the West (they’d tried to get her to go as one of the Munchkins from the Lollypop Guild, but that was shut down almost immediately. Complete with being flipped off – _screw you, Harrington, you think I look like a munchkin? / Well with those cheeks I mean - / Don’t say another word. I’m warning you. And if anything, it’s you who looks like a munchkin with that hair and squishy face. A regular old Chip and Dale. / Hey, he doesn’t have a squishy face! / Wasn’t talking to you, dingus’s girlfriend._

It was a riveting conversation, really, one for the papers, but it also meant that he and Nancy had lost in the fight for Robin to wear a sweaty animal costume. And that kind of sucked.

And Steve went as the Tin Man. He painted his body silver with that shit from the bargain store and pretty much just hoped for the best. He decided to not wear a shirt purely for authenticity, and while Robin rolled her eyes and called him a dingus as per usual, because _‘not every girl sees Steve ‘The Hair’ Harrington shirtless and immediately wants to jump in bed with him. Some of us are immune, and you really need to get that through your thick head’_ while Nancy actually looked him up and down. And not just like he just had something on his shirt (that he wasn’t wearing) but in that sexy way she used to. _‘Well, I don’t hear anyone else complaining.’_

And it only got weirder from there. Sure, he could use the fact that she’d drank a bit more than she usually does – due to losing pretty roughly at beer pong earlier (and she blamed him for the record, for being a _fucking shitty partner_ she’s always blaming him for things) as an excuse, but it was happening anyways, so what did an excuse matter now.

They were sitting on the couch and she was cuddled into him, his stupid make up coming off and getting on her cheek. That’s how close they were. And he didn’t mind it. It was kind of a shitty thing to be doing to Jonathan – liking it – but he was, and it seemed like she was, too. So, he tried not to think about it.

“So, are you and Robin like, a thing, or, what’s going on there?”

Steve turned to face her. For the last few minutes he’d been trying to distract himself from the warmth of her body by focusing his attention around the room. He had been watching a game of _suck-and-blow_ going on over on the couch and surrounding floor area opposite of where they were sitting, so it was at least something in his direct line of vision.

Maybe then, he’d thought, her warmth wouldn’t feel so permeating and reminiscent of old times, and it would stop turning his world upside down. And he was acknowledging now that may have been a poor choice of words.

She looked beautiful right now. Her freckles smudged and her skin sheening with sweat, her hair falling loose from the braids, pieces framing her face and some coming to rest against her neck. On her face was an expression he couldn’t name, but it reminded him of insecurity because he’s seen it mirrored on his face time and time again in the reflection of her eyes whenever she passed him in the mall, or on the street, or at the Hawkins Middle School dance with Byers on her arm. He’d be lying if he said it didn’t irk him, seeing it reversed like this.

Finally, after a year of wishing and hoping and wishing some more, it was happening. _Nancy Little Miss Perfect Wheeler_ and the _King of Hawkins High_ – together again. And forever, this time.

He had admitted it to himself a long time ago. He still loved her. He still loved her like that. It was so _like that_ it was crazy. It kept him up at night. He hated himself for the douche he’d been, for driving her straight into the arms of Jonathan Byers, for being a fucking crap boyfriend. He should have been there, fighting the Mind Flayer and its spawn with her, but he wasn’t. He was late.

In the arc of their whole relationship, he was either too late – in the case of the monsters and being her protector (not that she needed one, he was sure to add), or too early (and he’d admit this now – in saying _I love you_ ). It wasn’t that he hadn’t meant it, he might have been a total douchebag, but he wasn’t a bastard, it was that she hadn’t been ready to hear it.

And he should have seen that. Respected that. But he kept pushing his feelings on her, these intense, cosmic, world-upending kind of feelings, and she had started to feel suffocated by them. By _him._ Of course, he hadn’t seen the signs because he was standing too close. But they had been there. And there was the fall of their relationship.

And the beginning of another one.

“Uh – no. She’s uh – “

He contemplated telling her that Robin wasn’t into him like that because she wasn’t into _any_ guys like that, but it was not his thing to tell, so he just said no. _No, she’s not, so you won’t be stepping on her toes or anything._

“Just a friend,” she filled in for him with a small smile. “Good.”

 _Good._ He and Robin were _just friends_ and that was good. _What does that **mean** to you though, Nance? _

She shot him a wicked grin and pulled him up off the couch as _Twist and Shout_ blared over the sound system. “ _Oh,_ we are _so_ dancing to this.”

As they danced, and he watched her smile and laugh, while he did the same as they did the Mashed Potato like two freakin idiots, it slowly became a question for another time.

He could see Robin out of the corner of his eye, her witch dangling from her hand, and a grin on her face like she knew something he didn’t.

…

She invited him over for Thanksgiving dinner. He’d thought that it was just a casual thing, but as he listened to her voice carry through the phone, rising every so often on some words, he realized that she was nervous.

Why would she be nervous? It was just him. It was just _them._ They’d known each other for years. For risk of sounding like a moron, he’s seen the most intimate parts of her, and she, him, so the nakedness to her voice was something he couldn’t quite figure out. He’d thought they were past all that vulnerable stuff.

When he arrived at her front door, he knocked twice. Two simple raps with the knocker. He heard audible shuffling going in inside and a voice, her voice, above the mumblings of the rest of them. “I’ll get it!”

It was stupid, and it only lasted for a second, but it reminded him of when he used to pick her up for their dates, early on in their relationship, and beyond, just like this. The chivalry never stopped. Not where she was concerned. It’s just that, as time passed, she’d start to roll her eyes when she answered, or laugh in his face. _‘Babe, you can just walk in you know. Everyone loves you here’_ She’d rise up on her tiptoes and give his lips a chaste kiss _. ‘Including me.’_

This time, when she opened the door and saw him, her smile was beaming. She leaned over and kissed his cheek and pulled back just as quickly, it seemed, before she could think too much about it. He wanted to reciprocate but saw Jonathan’s face in his mind’s eye and his stupid conscience thought better of it.

He watched her blush and bite her bottom lip, and it was almost like her conscience came to her rescue too late, but the slightly chagrined smile she shot him as she led him through the foyer said that she almost didn’t care about the difference between right and wrong. It was so unlike her but _just_ like her all the same.

When they said goodbye hours later, her hand lingered on his back.

…

Next was Christmas. Now, he knew that Jonathan was coming back around for the holiday, so he’d be naive to expect to hear from her. But, of course, Nancy Wheeler was a decent person with some amount of decency, and by that he meant that she was practically perfect with an infinite amount of such, and so really though, it was no absolute surprise that an invite to the Wheeler Christmas party was extended to him.

When she asked him, her feet shuffling on the pavement and her eyes not meeting his, she’d said that it was on behalf of her mother, but he knew. He knew the truth. It was more than a little on her own behalf, too.

They’d gotten closer over the last few months. At the end of summer, after Jonathan left, she had seemed lost, wandering and even contemplating hanging out with Eleven and Max (and she had been, that first day he saw her again, taking a bite out of her strawberry ice cream in a sugar cone. Strawberry and sugar. A flavor that matched her perfectly. They were browsing for movies. Max was holding on tightly to _The Karate Kid._

He’d called over to her before he could stop himself, using her moniker – _Nance –_ without even realizing its sudden and bold connotations. Luckily, it rolled right off of her back and she just smiled quietly at him, and came over, listening intently while he introduced her to Robin, _officially_ , and started talking about the inane mundanities of working at an ice cream shop day in and day out, and how it wasn’t much better than this movie gig he’s got now.

She listened patiently, and her patient listening turned into banter with him, and her idle hands started to curl pieces of hair around her finger, and her smiles got brighter, less apologetic and _real._

By December, she was smiling at him like she used to.

Right now, for instance, she was smiling at his request to pass the mashed potatoes – this one was almost a secret, inside, smile and he knew why, all while she held Jonathan’s hand on her knee under the table.

There was a subtle look of longing as their fingertips brushed as she handed off the ceramic bowl, and he knew that she was wishing it was his hand holding hers. And on her thigh. Like he used to.

…

On New Years Eve, amongst the party people and loud noise of the television, over the rim of her overtly stupid looking _1986_ glasses, she told him that she and Jonathan had broken up. Meaningfully too, like this was his shot or something.

They couldn’t handle the distance. It was too much. And he’d admitted there might be someone else. He wondered if, even out of spite, she had admitted there was someone else, too. Here, in Hawkins. He couldn’t imagine it though. Even if he hurt her, she wouldn’t hurt him like that. It wasn’t in her nature.

So, when she pulled him in by the back of his grossly hot and sweaty neck for a kiss as the clock striked midnight, he had never been more expecting of something. Their lips touched and it was a fire starter. He lifted her up by the backs of her knees and now she was in his arms, her own wrapped around his neck, her fingers tangling themselves in his hair.

When they had sex that night – or the on the morning of January second, as the sky was still black and the stars were out, all he could do was feel her body. He couldn’t really see her. Only in the subtle light of the lamp, he saw her face, watched it crinkle in ecstasy as he entered her, and it wasn’t a foreign feeling. It never had been.

So, just as he was about to come, and she was close, he could sense it, he leaned down further, careful not to crush her with his weight, and slipped his hand in between her legs, his mouth on her neck.

The cadence of her moans and his alike were soft and dewy in the silence of the room, and he pulled on her hair with his free hand, gently, as his opposite one applied pressure where she longed for it most.

“I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she breathed out shakily, and he felt her tense up one last time, and then that was it. “ _Oh, god…”_

A few minutes later, when he spooned her to sleep in the dark of her bedroom, he realized something. He had never really stopped loving her. And now he didn’t have to.


End file.
